I consider myself a moderately effective text messager. While my training as an editor and former English teacher means that I have a hard time using alpha-numerical shortcuts like "gr8!" or "U no what I mean," I can still express myself fairly effectively and quickly.

That having been said, I must admit to a fair bit of wonder when I observe preteens on the subway, holding conversations with their fellow passengers while they somehow speed-type War and Peace-length messages to their friends. Watching their tiny thumbs vibrate with blurring speed, I feel a little bit like homo neanderthalensis observing those pesky little homo sapiens with their precious non-apelike faces and wiry body types. To put it mildly, I can feel evolution breathing down my neck.

My daughter, at three, is still too young to text message, but I can easily foresee a day in which she will conduct a rich and varied social life through the use of her cellphone. Luckily, new technologies will make it possible for me to keep tabs on her social life, ensuring that she stays away from that creep Lorie and doesn't get too friendly with the neighborhood sex offenders. Perhaps the most impressive of these programs is TextGuard; for $11.95 a month, it enables the user to read and even block all the messages that are sent or received from a particular cell phone.

I have to admit that it's a little disturbing that I will be able to purchase such impressive power for less than the price of three Big Mac value meals. In fact, when the time comes, I will probably have to do some serious soul-searching. Will I really want to oversee all of my daughter's cell-phone base communications, ensuring her safety at the cost of all her privacy? Do I really want to become Big Brother, ruthlessly controlling my little girl's private life? In my desire to be a better parent, will I become a lesser person? Most of all, does the NSA ever have massive moments of bone-shaking, existentialist doubt?

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He always considered himself more of a Winston Smith kind of guy.

Count on it each election season: Our elected representatives finally get off their duffs and start working on things that will actually affect our pocketbooks.

Early this week, Sen. Herb Kohl, who chairs the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the big four cell phone providers to demand they account for their outlandish recent price increases on text messages. Since 2005, the price of a text message has doubled to an industry standard of 20¢, and perhaps not so coincidentally, it has done so with all four phone providers: T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin, demanded that the cell phone companies show him paperwork about their price structures, including evidence of what made them decide to raise rates in such a dramatic way. The rate hikes, Kohl says, were "hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace," and he intends to look into them.